


Like The Stars Miss The Sun In The Morning Skies

by Meduseld



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Emotional pain, Feelings, Goodbyes, Just so much emotional pain, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, and all that implies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 03:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19098475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Hal and Thaal kiss goodbye.





	Like The Stars Miss The Sun In The Morning Skies

**Author's Note:**

> For the DC Bingo prompt "Goodbye kisses".

**First**

The universe is ending around them in a cacophony of color, pink and green and orange and purple throbbing and blinding against the dark, alive with intent, and Hal just thinks _fuck it_.

He crashes their lips together and slips his fingers into Thaal’s hair, so very different from his own, sleek in a way that feels like feathers. His tongue is even stranger, slimmer and stronger, the tip almost barbed. There’s blood in Hal’s mouth and his body is singing.

He’s never felt more alive than when he’s risking his life against bad odds.

Not that this was a long shot, not really, not with the ways they know each other now. Sinestro _—_ no, _Thaal_ , if Hal has his tongue in his mouth he gets to use his goddamn name _—_ scrapes his teeth, sharper than any human’s, along Hal’s lips like a warning and a promise.

Then he shoves Hal away, eyes glinting the way they do when they knock each other into the training mats. But wilder, now. Full of promise.

“You’ll pay for that” he says, imperious and pleased. It’s a promise, really. Hal smiles. “We’ll have to live for that” he answers, feeling like fire.

Shoulder to shoulder, they raise their rings and save it all, in the end. And he does, again and again.

 

**Fourth**

The Guardians only barely let Hal go, scolding him like nagging parents.

Like Hal wants to just swan off to Earth for some fun in the sun, instead of helping the League keep reality in existence. Like his life is there, instead of scattered in the stars.

It’s a long trip, even with the ring, and it took another round of begging and lectures to get them to send him the express way. It probably won’t turn him to glowing green spaghetti. Permanently anyway.

He knows he looks like he’s spoiling for a fight, fists closed and jaws tense, everyone scattering out of his path. Fearless his shiny ass.

Thaal settles into step with him when he’s close to the chamber, stomach tight and burning. He says nothing. In a lot of ways, the sex slotted into the way they were already a unit, just another perfect piece of it. In others, it’s kind of driving Hal insane.

But it’s better to think about it, the way the inside of his mentor-partner-lover’s mouth tastes, the strange sweetness of his alien sweat, than what’s waiting for him at the other end of the trip. One way or another, it’s going to hurt.

“You will return” Thaal says, managing to not sound patronizing but commanding. Hal lunges at him, to kiss him like a fist against his lips.

“You can count on that” he snarls, stepping into the light.

 

**Thirteenth**

Thaal’s nails, though they’re curved and sharp so they’re more like claws, really, card softly through Hal’s hair. It’s what wakes him up, tensing where he’s still naked and spent under the sheets in the half-dark of his Oan quarters.

Thaal doesn’t stay, usually. And as much as he likes Hal’s hair, just as fascinated by the differences in their anatomy, he doesn’t like to let on.

The same way he pretends that the way he digs his teeth into Hal’s neck whenever he can is just a coincidence. It’s a good thing it’s easy to enlarge the collars on his uniform with a thought. Not that he doesn’t enjoy keeping them small sometimes. Around Batman, especially.

Even in the dim light he can tell he’s never seen that expression on his face before. Maybe not on anyone’s face before.

His fingers don’t still even when he knows Hal is awake.

“Hey” he whispers to the close darkness, reaching out his own hand to his brows, his cheekbones, his lip. Thaal’s eyes shutter but he doesn’t relax. It must be bad.

“I must go. Tonight” he says, like he’s burdened. That means it’s Korugar that needs him, stuck in the flames of an inferno made by her people’s own hands. There’s nothing to say so he doesn’t say it, flattening himself back on the mattress as he waits. Thaal kisses the callus of his palm and goes.

He doesn’t get back to sleep that night.

 

**Twenty-seventh**

Hal’s ring gets seven pings in less than three-quarters of second and he’s moving, shifting into high speed before he’s even halfway in the main hall. Only emergency messages and Corps wide commands come through when he’s in flight training, teaching poozers how to make gravity an afterthought.

He knows what this means, that the meeting went poorly, that Thaal might be halfway to whatever the Guardians have in place of a court martial. That Hal might be orchestrating some sort of prison break, in one form or another. All he’s gotten, for now anyway, is shit duty at the ass end of the universe but that’s untenable. He thinks they all know that by now.

He knows they scheduled it carefully, made sure Hal wouldn’t be in the galley, couldn’t bear witness or offer defense. It’s possible they don’t really get what lies between them now, but they understand allegiances and how to manoeuver them.

He doesn’t think it’s a coincidence he’s been asked to take over training for Arisia Rrab and her hopeful smiles. They probably think they’ve spotted a pattern.

He makes record time getting to the adjunct chamber, where Thaal is staring mindlessly, fists clenched, power sparking around him like a storm of rage.

“Look at me” he says, commanding, ring hand cutting through the barrier like butter. Thaal has never kept him at bay, even when he should.

They kiss like drowning men, like there’s a mushroom cloud rising in the distance.

The bruise on his lips lasts long enough to see his return.

 

**Last**

Later, when Hal looks back, he won’t be able to pinpoint it.

There had to have been a moment, there had to have been one that was, but he can’t remember it. And he refuses to use his ring for it, there’s too much on there already, too many buried landmines and bullets aimed at his head.

It keeps him up at night sometimes, the desperate search to trace it, like maybe it comes with answers, too. It must have been ordinary.

Maybe a wet touch of lips as they switched places in the shower, or soft one as they feel asleep entwined, or a firm one to start the day, or just a brush broken by their moans as their bodies arched towards each other.

Small enough not to be remembered, even when it was the last before everything changed.

The kiss he hadn’t known meant goodbye until the morning when Hal woke up with everything and lost it all by the evening. The day that he discovered that the man that held half his heart turned out to be a traitor Hal had never known at all.

When the ground beneath his feet, the lodestone every pilot needed to know which way was flight, crumbled underneath him. Even after it all, when the lines were drawn and Hal had pulled blood from the man he still loved and gotten his ring back, it didn’t feel steady. Hal stays in the air, now.

Just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this fic is from _[Summertime Sadness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrL3QxjyVw)_ because Lana Del Rey is the perfect soundtrack for their mess of a relationship. If those numbers seem oddly familiar, it's because they're all unlucky, in one way or another. And finally, to make you smile, [spaghettification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification) really is a thing.


End file.
